For most of her film career, McQueen was typecast as a servant, but when those roles became scant in Hollywood during the 1950s, she pursued jobs in musical theater, television, and radio. She won the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame Award in 1975 and an Emmy Award for her role in the children’s television special The Seven Wishes of Joanna Peabody (1979).
Sarah J. Rudolph lost her right eye and her little sister, Addie Mae Collins, in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.
The “First Lady of Gospel,” she has received 10 Grammy Awards, 12 Stellar Awards, and 17 Dove Awards, but her commitment to her church remains paramount. Of her call to the ministry, she said, “I am called to be a preacher-evangelist first, and a singer second.”
Suffragist Henriette W. Johnson was elected president of the Woman’s Club of Orange, which was the first woman’s club in New Jersey when it was founded in 1872.
Source: http://www.njwomenshistory.org/discover/biographies/henriette-w-johnson/
On January 20, 2021, Kamala D. Harris became the first woman, the first African American woman, the first Indian-American, the first person of Asian-American descent, and the first graduate of an HBCU to be sworn in as the Vice President of the United States of America.
“The murder of my son has shown me that what happens to any of us, anywhere in the world, had better be the business of us all.”
—Mamie Till-Mobley, mother of Emmett Till, at a NAACP rally in Cleveland, Ohio, September 18, 1955
Businesswoman Sara Spencer Washington (1889-1953) was the founder of Apex News and Hair Company located in Atlantic City.
Florence Spearing Randolph (1866-1951) was a minister for the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.
Dr. Alexander’s role in the Rosetta mission, the first to land on a comet, was not her only triumph. She was also a project manager on NASA’s Galileo mission to Jupiter and was a member of the technical staff at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. As a researcher, Alexander’s studies included the evolution and interior physics of comets, Jupiter and its moons, magnetospheres, plate tectonics, space plasma, the solar wind and the planet Venus. She wrote or co-authored 14 papers.
In her 34 years at NASA/NACA, she contributed to numerous programs as a computer scientist, inspire many through her enthusiastic participation in outreach programs, break down barriers for women and people of color in science, technology, engineering, and mathematic (STEM) fields, and win the admiration and respect of her coworkers.